If Your Bones Are Now Heavy Things
by FeathersMcStrange
Summary: G is kidnapped and by the time Sam gets to him he's been dosed with some sort of truth serum drug, finding himself confessing to Sam that he's suicidal. It's one of the hardest conversations Sam has had in his life. (warning: suicidal ideation) H/C Bingo: wild card, drugged
1. Chapter 1

Written for my H/C bingo wild card square, and I picked 'drugged', and so here you have it, 3k words of my feelings about the fact that I strongly headcanon that G is passively suicidal pretty much constantly. It's not like he's going to Do Anything about it but it sure is there.

Whatever it is he was dosed with here, I completely made it up, there's like. No scientific accuracy re: truth serum at all.

Drop me a line and tell me what you think!

* * *

 _Show your hands if you need a new coat of paint_

 _If your bones are now heavy things_

 _Like anchors hidden somewhere neath your skin_

 _If your head's just an empty box_

 _Or if your heart has become spare parts_

 _If your days are now just something you must bear_

 _\- Radical Face, 'We're On Our Way'_

It's bitter luck that Sam is the only one in earshot when G makes the sneered admission to his captors. It was a snatch-and-run kidnapping, just grabbed off the street and pulled into a van, throwing NCIS into high alert, everyone dashing around in a panic trying to find him. They split up, covering as much ground as possible before it's too late. Sam found the warehouse his partner was being held in, creeping through the back with his gun drawn. Backup is on its way but the closest person is twenty minutes out. He's on his own.

G's only been gone a few hours, surely not long enough to do serious damage if they were interrogating him rather than killing him outright, but when he hears those words Sam thinks that the damage was done long before G's kidnappers even got there.

"Killing me is a pretty lousy threat here, buddy. Surprise! I already want to die! You can't hold my life hostage, I don't even _want it_."

Hearing this, Sam feels his heart stop cold in his chest. As G says those last two words, they make eye contact over one of the abductor's shoulder, and G's entire face blanches.

"Oh. Shit," he says flatly, in a move that shocks the hell out of Sam, because it gives his position away to the men holding G captive. Sam wonders, in the frightened, jangling alarm bells part of his mind, how bad off G has to be to have made that mistake.

For the moment though, all thoughts of the slip up and the terrifying thing he has just heard have to be driven from Sam's mind, in favor of dealing with the hostile men now aware of his presence. There are only two of them, and in the end they're easy enough to take care of. G's head is lolling down against his chest when Sam reaches him, and he's mumbling to himself inaudibly under his breath.

"G," Sam says urgently, tilting his partner's face up and putting two fingers to the pulse point at his throat. G's heart is still beating strongly, although it seems too fast to be normal. "Hey, how're you doing? You okay?"

 _Ridiculous question. Of course he's not okay, and he definitely isn't going to be honest about it. He never is. He's going to say 'I'm fine', just like he always does, he'd never admit to-_

"Not really," is the frank response that he gets, which is startling. Even when the answer is no, G always says yes, he's fine, everything is fine and Sam needs to stop fussing. Not once has the question 'are you okay' been met with a simple, direct 'no', which prompts Sam's mind to jump instantly to 'oh my god, he's dying'.

Except, Sam has seen G dying, more times than he'd care to think back to, and even then it hadn't gone like this. He realizes this at the same moment he registers that G has continued speaking, and that is when he really gets scared.

"Left side of my face is pretty bad, hurts to talk, I got tased a couple of times, and I think the one guy went at me with a crowbar, which really sucked."

Sam sits back on his heels, getting a good look at his battered friend. True to his word, the left side of G's face is indeed pretty bad. Red and purple new bruising blossoms across his jawline, creeping up across his cheekbone. His lip is split fairly deeply, and blood is trickling down his face and neck, seeping into the collar of his shirt.

"You'd think the universe would have long since satisfied its need to beat the shit out of me," G is saying as Sam slices through the cords holding his wrists behind his back with a swiss army knife. The skin under the cord is red and raw, torn up by G struggling against it. "You ever noticed how often I get beat up, Sam? I get beat up a lot."

"…I'd noticed." Sam wonders for a fraction of a second if G is maybe drunk off his ass, or really, _really_ concussed.

Getting G up onto his feet is not the easiest thing Sam has ever accomplished. When he first tries, G lets go of his arm with a sharp gasp, curling in on himself and dropping like a stone back onto the chair.

"Ow," he hisses, arms held protectively around himself. "Oh my god. Holy shit that hurt."

"Are you finally admitting you experience the human phenomenon of pain?" Sam jokes, trying to bring some levity to the situation. It's hard, with the words he'd overheard still stuck irremovably in his mind.

"I tried not to," answers G, apparently still in his stint of radical honesty. "It hurts _really_ bad and I tried to say it was okay but it came out different. I always lie to you about how bad it is, but I couldn't this time." He frowns sharply, wincing. "Shit. Forget I said that. _Shit_."

Its getting harder and harder for Sam to pretend there isn't something horribly, horribly wrong here.

"I can't stop trying to talk, Sam, I can't keep my mouth shut for two minutes. I didn't say anything important to them, they didn't get anything important out of me, but I told them my favorite color, and that I like cats more than dogs, and that I don't know what my birthday is, or my middle name, or my _first name_ at that and-"

"G," Sam interrupts, getting more and more panicky the longer this goes on. It's as if G hasn't even heard him.

"I didn't want to say any of it but I couldn't help it, it's like the words were just _itching_ under my skin and I couldn't keep them down. I couldn't stop talking, Sam, but I didn't give them what they wanted, I promise."

"I believe you, G, what-" And again Sam is cut off before he can finish his sentence.

"They made me, I didn't want to talk but they made me, and now I can't stop, I can't stop _talking_."

It clicks in Sam's mind at the same time that his foot comes in contact with a small bottle on the floor, rolling against his shoe.

"They drugged you."

"I don't know what it was," G confirms, hand going to the needle mark at his neck. "Like sodium thiopental on steroids and with a few extra tricks thrown in, and it _burned_. Now I get on a roll and I just can't stop." He shifts uncomfortably, looking around the room. "Listen, can we please get out of here?"

There's a quality in G's voice that makes Sam nervous, a kind of rawness that makes him want to get his partner somewhere safe _right now_. First he has to make a phone call, though, let Kensi and Deeks know that G is safe with him. Then get out of here before the backup arrives. If there's one thing Sam is sure of, it's that G is not going to want anyone to see him like this, hear the things he could potentially say.

G doesn't manage to stay silent for long, once they're safely in Sam's car. His voice floats across the vehicle from where he sits slumped against the car door, watching the road pass on the way to the hospital Sam's insisting on taking him to.

"You heard what I said. At the end there."

Goddammit. "I wasn't going to ask," Sam says, keeping his eyes fixed firmly on the road. If he doesn't ask then he doesn't get an answer, which means he can hang tight-fisted to the idea that it was a lie, some kind of ludicrous, addled attempt at getting his kidnappers to let go of the threat of death as leverage.

"I can hear you not asking all the way over here. You heard me say I wanted to die and you don't know whether I meant it or not."

Sam stares straight ahead at the street, hands tight on the steering wheel.

"Everyone would be better off if I was dead."

G doesn't sound upset or worked up, he just sounds tired and in pain. It would have been better if he had sounded upset, because then it could have been an outburst, a dramatic accusation by an agitated man who doesn't really mean what he is saying. But the calm, resigned nature of the statement combined with the drug still in G's veins, compelling him to speak only the truth, far past what he wants to admit, both lead to the conclusion that he means every word in utter sincerity.

"You're wrong," Sam says, trying to keep his voice under control. This is nothing he was ever trained for. There's no handbook on what to do when your best friend gets dosed with some sort of super drug making him tell the truth about things he never wanted anyone to know, including apparently confessing to being suicidal. "That's- That isn't true."

"It is," is what G comes back with, in the same subdued, exhausted tone. "And I'm just so tired, Sam. I go to sleep every night tired and I get up in the morning tired, I'm just. I'm tired. I'm tired of fighting through all this. And I don't make anybody's life easier by doing it either, everywhere I go, people just- People get hurt. It'd be easier, for me and for everybody, if I just gave up." G's forehead knocks lightly against the glass of the window, not looking at Sam, hands clenched into fists in his lap. "If I just. Died."

Sam's throat feels raw and dry. He knows G can't help what he's saying right now but inside he's begging his friend to stop talking, wishing he could go back in time to this morning when they stopped to get coffee on the way to work, back when he didn't know any of this. G seems to notice the look on his face and he snorts dryly.

"You don't have to worry about it, I'm not going to do anything. I never do. I think about it and think about it but I never- I'm not going to shoot myself or something." He winces at the same time Sam does. "Jesus, cause _that's_ a mental image we all needed"

The silence only lasts a scarce few seconds before G's voice starts up again.

"I don't try any more. I did when I was younger. Four times, when I was a teenager. Tried a whole bunch of stuff, but I couldn't even get that right."

"And now," G continues, voice getting louder, harder. "I'm sitting here, dumping all of this on you, as if I don't dump enough bullshit on you already. You weren't ever supposed to know _any_ of this, _nobody was_ , and now it's all out. _Fuck._ "

"You don't… _dump_ anything on me, G, and you don't need to tell me any of this if you don't want to."

"I can't STOP!" The outburst is sudden and G's voice cracks on the words. "I'm trying to stop, I don't _want_ to tell you, this isn't your _problem_ and I'm _sorry_ , but. They shot me up with god knows what and now I can't stop _talking_ , I would stop if I could but I _can't_ , Sam, _I can't_."

The phone in the center console starts ringing at that point, a shrill sound in the abruptly empty air of the car.

"Is that Hetty?" G asks, once more unable to stuff the words back in his throat. He sounds like the words are being torn out of him, like he's trying as hard as he can not to speak but is completely powerless to stop it. "Don't tell her I want to die, Sam, you can't tell her I want to die. If she finds out then I'm done for she'll have me locked up somewhere I won't ever get out of please, _please_ don't tell her."

It's at that point that Sam pulls the car over on the side of the road, throwing it into park and answering the phone. When he puts it up to his ear he spots G out of the corner of his eye, literally pressing a hand over his own mouth, stifling the words still trying to get out.

The decision to say nothing to Hetty about the scary things G has said in the last ten minutes is an easy enough one to make. Even if neither of them know for sure how she would respond it wouldn't feel right, not when Sam shouldn't be hearing any of this, shouldn't know the things G keeps closest to his chest unless willingly volunteered by the man himself. It feels wrong even knowing it, knowing right alongside it that G doesn't want him to know, without even considering telling someone else.

Protocol says that he should say something. Protocol says that a suicidal agent should be removed from duty pending psychological treatment and evaluation. But Sam knows G, has known him for years, and no matter what protocol says he should do right now, he's going to do what it takes to have his partner's back.

"I'm taking him back to my place, patch him up there," he finds himself saying, carefully watching G's face. "He got dosed with something, keeps spouting off everything that comes to his mind, we don't want him to say something he shouldn't in front of the wrong people. Yeah. Yeah I know. I _know_. Of course I will. I know, it's just not a risk we should take right now. Mhm. Sure. Bye."

The call is over quickly, leaving Sam and G staring at each other at the side of the road, in a silent car.

"Thank you," G says eventually, breaking eye contact and staring steadily down at his own hands. There's blood on one of them, a smear on the palm where he had reopened the clotting split in his lip when trying to keep quiet while Sam was on the phone. "You didn't have to do that."

Sam watches the blood drip down his best friend's chin, the bruising just visible under the collar of his shirt, tugged down a bit at an awkward angle. He doesn't know what the hell to say right now, but he has to say _something_.

Before he can get a word out, though, G moves, suddenly lurching for the door and flinging it open and pulling himself out of the car. For a moment Sam wonders if he's been sick, until he gets out of the car himself, and rounds the hood to see G, leaning against the vehicle muttering at a nearly hysterical rate. His hands are shaking so hard Sam can seeit, and the words that drift through the still air feel like someone has jammed a hot poker in Sam's chest and _twisted_.

"…bridge by the house and every time I go by it I think _what if I jumped off_ , and I'm scared to take painkillers home from the hospital cause the bottle sits by my pillow and all I want to do is screw off the cap and take all of them and go to sleep, and I want to just give up and stop fighting, my whole life has been one fight after another and I'm tired, I can't, god, I can't."

"G," Sam says in a cracked voice, feeling the back of his eyes burn. G looks over at him and his eyes are red rimmed and Sam can see teeth impressions on his lower lip where he's tried to bite it shut in a vain attempt to just stop talking.

"I'm sorry, Sam," is what G says back, shoulders heaving harder and harder as his breathing grows ragged. "You didn't ask for any of this. I'm sorry I'm- I'm sorry. It isn't fair to you, and this isn't your problem, it's _not-_ "

"It is." Sam interrupts to say this, because this is something he _can_ say, this is one piece of this mess that he knows what to do with. This is a road he's walked before, and he knows it well. "It _is_ my problem. Whatever's going on with you, whatever it is you haven't been telling anyone, I may not know how to help you but you're in pain and that is absolutely my problem."

The noise G makes next sounds like a combination of a choke and a sob. Sam moves to catch him right as his knees start to give out, wrapping his arms tightly around his partner and holding him close. It seems as if whatever he was injected with has dug its claws in and ripped off every mask he has ever worn and what's left behind is a vulnerable, angry, _scared_ person in an unimaginable amount of pain.

"It's okay," he says quietly, feeling G's hands catch in his shirt, clenching hard in the fabric with a kind of desperation. "I got you. You're not alone, you don't have to fight this alone. I've got you."

Every part of G's body aches, from the beating he took earlier and from the effort exerted to stay alive, to keep going day after day. Hanging onto the back of the shirt under his hands, G continues to mumble into Sam's shoulder, inaudibly saying that it feels good on some level to finally be free of this secret, to finally tell someone how hard he's been trying just to keep living when everything in him wants to just stop. He leans against the solid presence in front of him, letting Sam hold them both up.

He doesn't know how long this drug is going to last, how long he won't be able to keep a word he thinks to himself. Never before in a life full of considerable amounts of fear has G Callen been so afraid as he was in that car, confessing one of his most closely guarded secrets with no idea what kind of a response he would be met with.

But Sam hadn't told Hetty and now his voice sounds just above G's head, telling him everything is gonna be okay, and for the first time in a really, really long time (maybe in forever) G finds that he just might believe it someday could be.


	2. Chapter 2

So, in no small part thanks to the reviews and messages I've gotten asking if I was going to do a second part, I actually decided to do that! This fic hit home to a lot of really personal parts of me, and I'm so glad it's been so well received. I hope y'all like the second part as much as the first.

Please tread carefully, as does contain some potentially triggering material. Warnings for discussion of suicide and suicidal thoughts (no actions are taken), discussion of a potential threat of forced institutionalization, and some language.

* * *

 _If you need come build your home in me_

 _And you know I won't complain_

 _And I can't fix what was done to you_

 _But I'll shield you from the rain_

 _Radical Face, "Small Hands"_

Consciousness drifts in slowly, and G is awake for what feels like a few minutes before he kicks up the wherewithal to open his eyes completely and take stock of his surroundings. Through the window across what appears to be a living room, he can see that it's almost nighttime, the last dregs of sunlight draining from an ever-darkening sky. After a few seconds of squinting around the familiar feeling living room, it clicks. Sam. It's Sam's living room.

It's hardly the first time G has come to on this couch, but usually he can remember how it was he got there to begin with. As his head becomes clearer and he tries to come up with the day's events, feeling abruptly and harshly returns to his body. There's not an inch of him that doesn't suddenly ache with a kind of gnawing pain all too familiar to him.

Nothing quite like the feeling of very recently having been beat to hell, G thinks, unable to stop the pained groan that escapes through tightly gritted teeth. And on top of that, he still can't remember how he got here.

The sound draws Sam in from the kitchen. He stands watching in concern as G heaves himself into a semi-sitting position, leaning heavily against the arm of the couch.

After G gets himself settled, Sam sits down and asks, "How're you feeling?"

"Like I got hit by a truck or four," G answers, making a face. "What happened? Why am I here?"

The look that flickers across Sam's face is some warring combination of worry and relief. He shifts a bit, turning more fully to face G.

"You don't remember?"

G looks down at his hands, preparing to answer when he catches sight of the wounds just above them, overlapping red marks encircling both wrists. The sight of the marks brings it back, in bits and pieces, flashes of disjointed memory.

 _The impact of a crowbar against the left side of his ribcage._

 _A bottle and a syringe, the feeling of the unknown drug coursing through his veins._

 _Blood seeping into the collar of his shirt, a sardonic twist of a smirk, "You can't hold my life hostage, I don't even want it."_

 _"Is that Hetty? Don't tell her I want to die, Sam, you can't tell her. If she finds out then I'm done for, she'll have me locked up somewhere I won't ever get out of, please, please don't tell her."_

 _Losing it completely outside Sam's car, the breakdown of any façade he may have hoped to maintain that he was okay, that he was keeping it together._

"Oh _fuck_ ," G groans in present time, dropping his bruised, aching head into his hands. "Fuck."

With his eyes screwed tight shut and heels of his palms pressed into them, G can sense the apprehension and radiation radiating off Sam from there.

" _Do you_ remember?" The question is asked in a deliberately mild, calm voice. There's no accusation, no challenge.

G lifts his head up but doesn't look at Sam – can't look at Sam. His cheeks are flushed in humiliation and he nods.

"Yeah," he says, dully. "I- I remember." What do you say to move on from there?

Judging by Sam's lack of a response, sitting beside G in silent acceptance, he doesn't know either.

As more and more of the events of the previous hours come back to him, memories of telling them he doesn't know his own birthday, of not being able to stand but for Sam holding him up, of being unable to stop the sobs from tearing from his chest, G feels as if freezing metal claws are gouging their way into his lungs. He fights to keep his breathing under control, nails digging into his palms as his hands fist tightly in his lap.

So now Sam knows. All the things he'd tried so hard to keep a secret, the days he forced himself to drag his exhausted body out of bed and pretend he didn't want to go back to sleep and never wake up, it was all for nothing.

In a last ditch attempt at getting ahold of himself, G looks around the room, taking in his surroundings. The room feels exactly like the bizarre, tenuous safe haven it always has felt like, last rays of light from the dusk sun alighting on framed family photos. His eyes land on one in particular, one he himself is in with Sam's children, Kamran perched on his shoulders, his arm slung around Aidan. Funny, he hadn't noticed that the last time he was here.

Suddenly, the reality under which he finds himself in this house cracks through the relative moment of serenity, and G practically flinches, eyes going sharply back down to his own hands.

"You shouldn't have brought me here," he mutters fiercely. "Michelle and Kamran-"

"Aren't here," interrupts Sam, not fazed by the tone. "Kam's at a sleepover, Michelle's on assignment. What should I have done, G? Left you to wake up alone after that at your place? If you think there was a chance in hell I was gonna do that, then you clearly don't know me very well."

G has to admit he has a point there, however unfairly made, and he's about to comment on this when shifting his position on the couch causes a surge of pain to wash over him, his vision whiting out. Reality ebbs back in after a moment, with Sam staring at him in alarm.

"Definitely cracked a couple ribs," G gasps out when he has enough breath to do so.

"You really need to go to the hospital."

"No," G says quickly, shaking his head emphatically. "No hospital, no."

"G you were _tortured_ ," Sam says incredulously, as if G has maybe somehow forgotten.

"It's not like they were _good at it_."

The expression on Sam's face suggests a thought along the lines of 'you'd think I would be used to this by now.'

After a few beats of silence, Sam relents. "Alright, but if you get worse I'm taking you to the ER, okay?"

"Deal," G agrees.

"I'd get you something for the pain, but…"

"We don't know how it would react to what I was dosed with," G finishes. "Yeah."

They both know what they are avoiding here, the conversation they know is coming and don't want to have. Much as G wishes he could head this off at the pass, take back everything he said and start over, there's no getting out of this conversation. The consequences of this could destroy him.

G feels abruptly angry that all of the disasters in his life, all the times he's been shot, kidnapped, beat, held hostage, every time he's almost died in his dange magnet existence, and _this_ is what ruins him? Barely a couple hours, a mystery drug, and some words he shouldn't have said, and it's all over. Because he knows what has to happen next.

It's not Sam's fault. He is duty bound to report this to Hetty and, well, G knows what Hetty's going to do. There is no room in Hetty's world or her employ for a suicidal agent. She'll pull whatever strings she has to and have him committed, somewhere he'll never get out of. He knows too much for her to ever allow him to be released.

"Do what you have to do," G says quietly. "You don't have to feel guilty. I understand."

"What are you talking about?" Sam's voice sounds alarmed and taken aback, like he has no idea what G means.

"When you tell Hetty. I get it, okay? You do what you gotta do."

"No way." The response is immediate and strong. It's enough to shock G into making eye contact.

"Excuse me?"

"Nobody," Sam says steadily, meeting his eyes, "is gonna hear about this unless you decide to tell them. I shouldn't have found out like this, but neither of us had much of a choice on that one."

G just isn't comprehending what's being said. "So, wait, you're not gonna report this to Hetty?"

"No. I'm not."

"Why?"

"Because it's none of her business," Sam answers frankly. "Nothing has changed. You do your job just fine, you'd never put any of us in danger, I don't see how she needs to know unless you decide to tell her."

In an off hand, split-second, slightly hysterical thought, G wonders what the catch is. Before he can do something totally ridiculous like ask that question out loud, Sam keeps talking.

"And I meant what I said earlier, by the road."

Recalling how soundly he'd lost it then, G's cheeks heat up. He finds himself wishing the mystery drug _had_ wiped his memory of the last stretch of hours, because that's one extended breakdown he could do without remembering.

(Except there's another part of him that's glad he remembers, because when is the last time someone held him like that? It's humiliating and childish but the phantom feeling of being crushed in the embrace of someone he trusted isn't a memory he wants to give up.)

In the midst of his slightly addled train of thought, G realizes Sam has been waiting for him to respond, confirm he knows what Sam is talking about.

"Yeah," he says quietly, nodding. Shooting a quick look over at Sam, who is watching him with a worried crease in his forehead, G stifles a groan. "Look, it's nothing to worry about, okay?"

Sam raises his eyebrows as if you say 'you're kidding me, right?' and G rolls his eyes.

"I mean it's not like I'm gonna just let myself die on a case, let someone shoot me or something." _That'd put you and whoever else I was working with in danger. I wouldn't risk that._ "I'm not gonna do anything. I never do. It's fine."

It isn't fine. None of this is fine. It hasn't been for a very long time. Maybe it never was.

"I don't think there's anything anyone can do to fix me." The statement is barely loud enough to be heard. Sam blinks, not quite understanding, and G sighs. "It's nothing you can fix, Sam, I don't think it's something anyone can fix. I appreciate the concern, I really do, but it might just be better for everyone if you forget this ever happened."

"There are…" Sam speaks slowly, choosing his words carefully. "There are more options here than you magically getting better and me pretending this never happened."

G shakes his head like he just doesn't believe a word Sam is saying. There isn't a part of him that understands this. He's in uncharted waters, and somehow the fact that Sam is still _there_ , is sitting next to him, offering the promise to give a damn even fully knowing just how deep the damage runs, somehow that is infinitely scarier than if Sam had accepted his offer and he'd gone back to fighting a never ending battle with his own mind, alone. It's as if after years of that, it's become the safe option.

It's a terrifying, exhausting, unspeakably painful reality to live in, to be constantly on the losing end of a war no one even knows you're fighting, but it's the devil he knows, and he fears that less than the devil he doesn't. Once you have something, you can lose it. It's easier not to have anything at all.

"I don't know where to go from here. I don't even know where to start." Whatever he was shot up with has lost its effect, but it's easier to pretend he's still talking like this, open and vulnerable, because there's a drug compelling him to. "I've been like this for as long as I can remember. I don't know how to want to live. I don't know what that looks like."

"We'll figure something out." Everything in Sam's voice when he says it sounds like he means it, like his heart is in the words completely. "I'm not under any impression that I can fix you. I mean, I don't think you need _fixing_ , I think you need _help_ , but… I'm here. I don't care how long it takes; I don't care if it takes forever. I'm still gonna be here, and I'm still gonna try and help you however I can."

It's stretching it a bit, G thinks, to blame the tightness in his throat on the drug, on his injuries, but he figures after the day he's had, he's allowed to stretch it. He keeps staring down, eyes fixed on his own hands.

"Hey." The word is accompanied by a gentle nudge of Sam's knee against his. This time G looks up, makes eye contact with his friend.

"Do you trust me?" Sam asks, and it's somehow possible that it's an even more loaded question than ever before.

Still, somehow, G knows the answer.

"Yeah," he says in a rough voice.

"Then we'll figure something out, okay?" Sam repeats, and he sounds just as steady and sure as he always has.

Maybe it's that familiarity, the way that tone from Sam is as good as an 'I promise', and Sam Hanna is not a man who breaks his promises, that makes G nod.

"Okay."


End file.
